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Sheriff Carmine Marceno Part 1
I’ve written before about Sheriff Carmine Marceno of Lee County, Florida – aka the “Law and Order Sheriff” – who, since he was appointed sheriff in 2018 has been the source of constant low-grade scandal.
To recap: Marceno was a Long Island “parks cop” before moving to Florida, getting a gig in a tanning salon, and inexplicably rising to the post of undersheriff and sheriff of Lee County, a GOP stronghold. He made his “dear friend” Sean Hannity an honorary deputy. There are questions as to whether Marceno’s law enforcement certification is legit. He may have forced his mistress to have an abortion. He arrested a 10-year-old – mug shot, perp walk, cuffs – for texting a joke. His deputies appear to have killed someone in the jail using excessive force, probably choking (this is the subject of an ongoing civil lawsuit).
In April, the sheriff launched his re-election campaign and failed to explain to the local Fox affiliate why with all his departmental funding his deputies have been unable to solve a homicide.
And there’s a new scandal – Marceno’s gambling winnings. According to financial disclosures, Marceno won over $450,000 at the Seminole Hard Rock casino over 2021 and 2022. (His salary is a paltry $350,000.) While Marceno hasn’t responded to these revelations, his undersheriff John Holloway told the Florida Center for Government Accountability that the $450,000 is “not a net number” and does not include losses.
The explanations about the gambling winnings don’t make things sound any better. Holloway said that he has gone gambling with Marceno many times and “never worried” the sheriff had an addiction, adding that “we have busier schedules this year,” so the sheriff has probably gambled less. Holloway further explained that “the sheriff enjoys playing slot machines to relax, a habit he shared with his late grandmother with whom he was very close.” (Perhaps this goes beyond just for fun, since two local arcade companies contributed $10,000 each to Marceno’s re-election campaign.)
Another gambling friend – and, coincidentally, a fundraiser for Friends of Carmine Marceno, the sheriff’s election PAC – is Malik Khalil, a fraudster who was found by a civil court to have bilked victims out of at least $2 million by encouraging them to invest in a phony business scheme. Khalil’s wife/ business partner and another female associate are both wanted for felonies in neighboring Hillsborough County. (Sheriff Chad Chronister of Hillsborough County has voiced support for Marceno, so presumably he’s not looking all that hard.)
Marceno even gave Khalil an “honorary Lee County sheriff’s badge.” According to the victims looking for their money, however, Khalil is also nowhere to be found.
And Khalil might be more than a con man – one victim, Dr. Jordan Kuppinger, claimed that Khalil told them he had the cops in his pocket. According to Kuppinger:
[Khalil] filed false reports against us and they [detectives from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office] said they had to investigate us…I said, ‘What do you have to investigate? He filed false police reports.’ They called me several times and I finally got angry and told them that if they continued on the road they were going down, I would take legal action against them. Then it stopped.
Marceno’s office has refused to disclose any documents about the Kuppinger investigation, citing “open active investigations” and “Marcy’s Law,” a 2018 law intended to give crime victims a voice in the investigation but has been increasingly used by law enforcement to protect their own.
While this latest strange revelation builds the case that Marceno is probably better off on the beach than in a sheriff’s uniform, I’ve always been suspicious of his overly aggressive TikTok videos, frequently featuring members of his SWAT team getting jiggy with the idea of shooting people. It turns out, there was good cause for worry. Next time, on Posse Comitatus – are Sheriff Marceno’s TikTok dancing videos more than just an unfunny joke?